McManus laughed. “Have I ever done anything inappropriate?”
Gwen paused. “I think the flirting itself is inappropriate.”
“Would you be able to find anyone to corroborate your accusation that I’ve been flirting with you?”
Gwen sighed heavily. “No, Admiral. I wouldn’t.”
“Then let’s stick to the matter at hand. Did you copy the names you saw on page one of Senex?”
“No.”
This was a technical truth. Gwen hadn’t copied anything, but she had, of course, memorized the names.
“Have you told anyone what you saw?” McManus asked.
“No.”
There was a long pause in the room as the screen temporarily went dark.
“I’m not sure I believe you,” McManus stated when his face once again stared from the screen. “There are very sensitive electronic monitoring devices inside the chair you’re sitting in. They can monitor blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, and respiration. You just lied to me.”
“Maybe you need to get your chair examined and repaired,” Gwen said sarcastically.
Admiral McManus took a deep breath. “I was hoping you’d be more forthcoming, Gwen. I can make things much easier if you cooperate. You might even be able to return to your job, and we can pretend this never happened. It won’t even go on your record.”
“Exactly what do you want, Admiral?” Gwen asked.
“Quite a lot, actually. I’ll be there in person shortly. For now, think of your future. Your security. And, of course, your family.”
The screen went dark again as Gwen sat silently in the strange room. She didn’t think McManus would harm Ben and the kids, but she nevertheless said a silent prayer for her family.
The Moss Household
Alexandria, Virginia
Benjamin Moss picked up his wife’s cell phone and dashed through a gap in the hedge at the rear of the property just in time to see a man in black clothing close the driver’s door of an SUV and speed away.
A Company job. Gwen had often told Ben that there were rumors of employee abductions no different than those seen in espionage movies.
Heart pounding, Ben knew exactly what to do.
He sprinted back to his home. The kids were in bed. Good. He didn’t need to deal with tears and panic now.
As he made the obligatory 911 call, he began backing up Gwen’s PC correspondence on disk and then erased her PFC. The CIA wouldn’t send anyone to confiscate her computer, but it would hack it the next time anyone used it to go online.
Ben breathed slowly and steadily. The police were on their way. In his report, Ben would mention that his wife worked for the CIA, not that the Company had abducted her. That would make the Agency squirm, and that wouldn’t contribute to Gwen’s safety at all. A missing CIA employee, even if not an active field agent, always garnered attention in the press, and attention is what the CIA did not especially care for, not in any form whatsoever. He felt sure that Gwen would be returned unharmed in a day or two, but notifying the police had been the right thing to do.
But Ben recalled the odd call from Admiral Grady McManus about Gwen’s reassignment to the Midwest.
His confidence waned. Would McManus threaten Gwen, telling her that unless she relocated under a pseudonym, her family might be in jeopardy? Yes, agents were sometimes brought in for questioning in the middle of the night.
Once in a blue moon, they were never heard from again.
Titan Six
The Cube beneath Mount Elbert
While Hawkeye and Tank sat under a shady oak, enjoying the company of their father, Shooter walked on the beach of a Caribbean island with her child and grandmother. The sun was glorious, clear blue water touching her toes on warm, white sand as they walked east.
Gator sat in the home of his parents, drinking a beer and speaking of the glorious battles he had waged for his country. The old couch in the den made him feel as if he were safe, secure. He thought he belonged in the room. He doubted that he would ever return to combat.
When the room had begun to glow orange, Aiko saw that her team members were becoming transfixed, no doubt caught up in some reverie or hallucination. Immediately, she’d closed her eyes, emptied her mind, and focused on a single point of light. Inside that light, she imagined Catherine Caine pacing about the Ops Center. Someone was attempting to tap her on the shoulder, to divert her attention. It was her former superior, Li Soo Yang, who was head of the covert Chinese forces Aiko had led.
Open your eyes, Saturo. I have wonderful things to show you.
Aiko knew that Yang’s voice was illusory. She maintained her concentration for several minutes before opening her eyes. The room no longer glowed orange, but her comrades were still seduced by some kind of spell associated with the walls.
Suddenly, five soldiers dressed in brown stormed the room. The new member of Titan Six was on her own.
The first soldier charged her, but Aiko simply stepped aside, grabbed his shoulder as he passed her, and sent him crashing into the wall. The others seemed startled. Two more charged her simultaneously. They stopped in their tracks, stunned, as their foe seemed to defy gravity — was it their imaginations that she was hovering in mid-air? — one palm raised and the other extended in the classic martial arts position assumed before an attack. Her legs were curled beneath the trunk of her body.
Aiko was actually moving forwards, landing behind the soldiers. She pivoted on her left leg, kicking one soldier to the ground while sending her rigid palm into the neck of another. Without a pause, she pivoted on her other leg, twisting her body one hundred and eighty degrees. Her fists were a blur as she sent powerful forward jabs at two more opponents. After hard blows to their chests, she somersaulted over the first soldier she’d dispatched. His face was red and angry as he ran at Aiko again, but she countered with a sharp blow to his neck. His eyes opened wide as he heard his own vertebrae cracking, his head tilted to the side. A groan escaped his lips as he sank to the floor.
“Status, Titan Six,” Touchdown said from the Ops Center.
“Aiko here. Titan Six seems to be hypnotized or in some other altered state. I have six bodies, all soldiers, on the floor and incapacitated.”
“Take the syringe labeled N-14 from your backpack,” said Touchdown, “and administer each soldier a single dose of tranquilizer that will keep them down until we can figure out a way to bring Titan Six back to the here and now.”
“Administering N-14 now,” Aiko said.
“Touchdown, give Titan Six extra norepinephrine,” Dr. Nguyen said. “A neurotransmitter responsible for energy and alertness.”
“Norepinephrine it is,” Touchdown said, typing in the appropriate command.
“Is anything happening?” Caine asked.
“Yes,” said Aiko. “Their bodies are shaking.”
“Shaking?” said Touchdown.
“Not shaking,” said Nguyen. “They’re seizing.”
Titan Six
The Cube beneath Mount Elbert
The former Chinese commander took several steps backwards. Her four comrades were all prostrate on the floor, their bodies shaking violently. She quickly grabbed gauze from her backpack, wrapped it around gel pens that each carried, and placed the gauze between their teeth to prevent them from biting their tongues.
“Awaiting orders,” said Aiko.
“If I give them serotonin, I might send them back into their hypnotic states,” Nguyen said.
Aiko stepped back and closed her eyes again. She had deduced minutes earlier that the room was thought-responsive, which is why she had cleared her mind and focused on her mission. She’d been exempt from the blissful trances encountered by the others. She now imagined each team member standing up straight, calm and alert. Hopefully, both the room and Titan Six would respond to her mental suggestions.
One by one, the bodies of Hawkeye, Tank, Shooter, and Gator relaxed, the seizures having passed. They slowly climbed to their feet, loo
king perplexed.
“I remember being in the room with the hexagons,” Hawkeye said, “and then a lab, but after that . . . everything’s a bit fuzzy.”
“I had the strangest dream,” Shooter said. “I was in the Caribbean.”
“I think we all had some strange dreams,” Tank said. He paused. “Hey, what happened here? Who are these guys on the floor?”
“I had to use . . . ” Aiko looked at Gator. “I had to use a bit of that Matrix shit, as you call it.”
“You laid low all six of these men by yourself?” Hawkeye asked incredulously.
Aiko nodded. “I’m sure the BioMEMS enhancements didn’t hurt either. But we must control our thoughts and leave this room before it causes more hallucinations.”
Hawkeye saw the portal through which the five soldiers had entered.
“Then let’s go,” he said. “Through the portal, everyone.”
* * *
“Four more targets up ahead,” Touchdown said into the COM link. “Humans. I presume they’re commandos like the ones Aiko fought. They’re armed.”
Titan Six was traveling through a long hallway. At the far end, a tall metal cylinder was spinning. A curved door in the cylinder slid back and two commandos stormed into the hall, assault rifles at the ready position.
Shooter fired at the one on the right, Tank at the one on the left. Both fell to the floor, but two more commandos immediately emerged from the spinning cylinder. Gator cut them down in seconds with his SAW.
“Is this some kind of bizarre shooting gallery?” the machine gunner asked .
“No more targets ahead,” Touchdown said. “The cylinder appears to be some kind of elevator.”
“We can’t go back into that weird room,” Hawkeye said. “Let’s take another ride, folks.”
Titan Six slipped through the revolving door ahead, which closed as the cylinder, now feeling more like a tube in a pneumatic system, rose straight up.
The tube came to a gentle stop. Titan Six stepped from the cylinder into an empty room. The entire surface of every wall turned white, and then displayed three seated men.
“Like four giant movie screens,” said Shooter, turning around and looking at the walls.
“Not far from the truth,” said the man in the center.
The three men were seated at a table, and they looked with curiosity at Titan Six.
The man in the center spoke again. “You’re very resourceful, Titan Six. Unfortunately, entrance to this facility is by invitation only. You will have to be terminated.”
“They look human enough,” Tank remarked.
“Oh, I assure you that we’re quite human,” the man on the screen said.
“Who are you?” asked Hawkeye.
“The keepers of the cube.”
The screens went dark and were replaced by metallic walls common to other areas of the cube.
“The portal’s gone!” Gator cried.
Hawkeye wheeled around. “Trapped again, Ops. At least we know there’s human authority behind both the Sents and commandos.”
“Roger that,” Touchdown said. “We’ve recorded everything. Sit tight for now. Maybe another portal will appear in one of the walls.”
“Use the time to run the sample from the Sent,” Ambergris said.
“Affirmative,” Hawkeye said.
The team leader turned three hundred and sixty degrees. The silver-tinted walls were vacant of any adornment or portal.
The keepers of the cube, he thought. Who the hell are they?
Ops Center
Beneath Mount Whitney
“There’s a maze of passageways extending from the room Titan Six is in,” Touchdown said, “but I still don’t know what triggers the portals to open and close. If the cube were wired with regular circuitry, I could override certain systems and advise Titan Six on the best route based on telemetry.”
“What were you saying about DNA, Joshua?” asked Caine.
“Ah yes,” Ambergris said. “I think I can begin to shed further light on the problem. As I’ve suspected, the cube is alive, although I don’t believe that it’s sentient. We’ve just seen, for example, that it’s under the control of human beings.”
“In what way is it alive?” asked Caine.
“The cube is a hybrid of metallic elements and organic compounds,” Ambergris replied.
“How is that even possible?” said Caine.
“As I mentioned before, the human body itself contains numerous metals in its blood and organs. It’s certainly feasible that some life forms, infinitely more sophisticated than we are, might be able to use the basic molecular structures of metals as a grid upon which to introduce organic components.”
“Organic?” asked DJ.
“Yes,” said Ambergris. “Notice how the Sents repaired themselves and how the cube itself is capable of changing color, texture, and form. This implies that the organic materials are programmed.”
“By what?” asked Caine.
“By the most sophisticated programming system known to all living things on earth: DNA. This organic feature of the cube’s structure is also why it’s thought responsive to those who get near to it, or at least certain sections of it.”
“The hallucinations,” Nguyen said. “Is this why our engineers are ill?”
“Exactly. An unfortunate side effect of the hallucinations, when prolonged, is cellular breakdown, accompanied by damage to DNA. The energy from the cube can, in some instances, be overwhelming to the human nervous system.”
“But why isn’t T6 getting sick?’ Nguyen asked. “They’ve had several hallucinations.”
“Because of you, Grace. The latest BioMEMS injections against genetic mutations have been protecting them.”
“What about those branching networks of lines we see in the semi-transparent walls?” asked Caine.
“We’re literally observing electrical impulses crossing nerve synapses. I’ll know even more when I see the results from Hawkeye’s metal sample.”
The Ops Center was silent while those at their stations assimilated the import of what Ambergris had said.
“What about the structures T6 found in the cube’s lab,” Caine said. “On those mirrors.”
“Did you notice the crystal buildings and the pyramid?” Ambergris asked.
“Yes, of course,” said Caine, “and — ”
Caine halted abruptly.
Ambergris nodded his head. “We are confronted yet again by the technology of the Ancients.”
* * *
Years earlier, Joshua Ambergis, Grace Nguyen, and other Titan Global scientists had discovered that seemingly random sequences on strands of DNA consisted of nonrandom patterns containing huge amounts of information that came to be called The Genesis Code.
The Code had been implanted on the human genome by a progenitor civilization that had gone extinct two hundred thousand years ago. To preserve and pass on its highly advanced culture because of an impending cataclysm, it coded human DNA with almost unlimited information in numerous cultural and scientific areas: architecture, energy production, healing, metaphysics, history, genetics, and hundreds of other fields. Titan Global was still working on unlocking the Code that was contained on trillions of DNA sequences that were previously thought to be useless fillers called introns.
What was known for certain was that architecture from Central and South America, Egypt, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East had been heavily influenced by the architecture of the Ancients. Intermediate cultures going back thousands of years had passed down some of the rudiments of the progenitor civilization.
The United States government was aware of the discovery and had outsourced research on the Code to Titan Global for security reasons.
* * *
“So the Ancients built the cube?” Caine asked.
“There’s really no other explanation,” Ambergris said. “We know that they were master manipulators of DNA and had extremely advanced technology. The architecture displayed on t
hose lab mirrors validates the hypothesis.”
“So we have two pressing questions,” said Caine. “Why did the Ancients build the cube, and who are the human inhabitants within?”
“We need to find where that last transmission originated from,” Touchdown said. “The three people on those screens are apparently in charge of the soldiers in the brown uniforms.”
“That transmission may have originated from anywhere in the world,” DJ pointed out.
“Let’s hope it came from within the cube,” said Caine. “Otherwise, Titan Six may not be able to get at the heart of this mystery.”
Titan Four
SURP Station 872
Titan Four’s maglev transport eased into the great vault that was SURP Station 872. They exited the car and fanned out cautiously, surveying the solid-rock vault.
“Company’s coming, Blade,” said Touchdown. “The monorail from the Adirondecks is about to arrive with one hundred soldiers aboard.”
“We’re slightly outnumbered,” Tomahawk remarked.
“Aren’t we always?” said Demon.
“Take cover behind that old flatbed trailer on the far side of the station,” Blade said. “Do you want us to engage, Ops?”
“Yes,” said Caine. “Titan Six doesn’t need an extra one hundred soldiers to combat. Use gas. I’m not interested in wholesale slaughter.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Blade. “Gas it is.”
Six minutes later, a blue and white monorail slid into the station adjacent to the maglev guideway. The commandos exited their cars and stood in the cavern in five rows of twenty, rucksacks slung over their shoulders.
“Now,” whispered Blade. “Lob your canisters.”
Five gas grenades landed among the columns of soldiers, yellow gas dispersing among the ranks immediately. The startled commandos coughed, turning in all directions to see where the attack had originated.
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